The first thing you need to know about the Atiz BookDrive Mini is that it's meant primarily for libraries (corporate and otherwise); archivists; and others who have a professional need to scan books and other bound material. But you probably guessed that from the price. The second thing is that it's not what you probably think of when you picture a scanner. It's essentially a camera stand and book holder plus software that lets you scan (and yes, scan is the right word) by taking photos. If you need to scan bound pages without risking damaging the original, it can actually be a bargain.

Book scanners come in two basic varieties. Some, like the Plustek OpticBook 4800, are similar to standard flatbeds, except that the platen comes to the edge of the scanner. To scan, you put one page of a book on the platen, with the facing page and that side of the book hanging straight down along the side of the scanner. That lets the page you're scanning lie flat, so you don't have to worry about the bound side rising up away from the platen, where it may not be in focus and text lines will look curved.

This kind of book scanner works well enough, but having to scan one page, turn the book to scan the facing page, then turn the page and start again is cumbersome. It's also easy to forget whether you just scanned a left or right page, so you have to look at the book to reorient yourself. Worse, letting a heavy book hang down along the side of the scanner can potentially damage old, fragile originals.

The V-Shaped AdvantageScanners like the BookDrive Mini offer a better alternative. Instead of a flat platen, the book rests in a V-shaped cradle. That lets you open the book and see both facing pages, with page sizes up to 10 by 15 inches in the case of the BookDrive Mini. The cradle is near the base of a frame that also serves as a stand for two cameras. Each camera is pointed down at an angle to shoot one page, with the camera on the right pointed at the left page and the camera on the left pointed at the right page.

What turns the cameras plus cradle into a scanner is the way they work. The cameras connect to your computer, using your hard drive as camera memory, so they're sending files to disk. You also control the cameras from your computer, including adjusting the camera settings, giving the Capture command, and managing the files on your hard drive. The only difference from using a standard flatbed scanner is that instead of a sensor moving across the page one line at a time to capture the image, you're using the sensor in each camera to capture an entire page at once.

Scanning with this kind of book scanner is a lot faster and easier than with the flatbed kind. Once you have the settings right for a given book, all you have to do is give the command to capture the first two facing pages, turn the page, and repeat. Atiz says that with typical settings, you can scan about 700 pages per hour. That works out to a little over 11 pages per minute on average, and seems to be a reasonably relaxed pace based on my tests.

Pricing and RentalsThe BookDrive Mini is available only from Atiz, with somewhat different pricing than with most products. One choice is to buy the frame and software by itself for $6,295, and get the cameras elsewhere. Atiz says that the software will work with any Canon SLR camera, and the company will be happy to advise you on the best model for your needs.

If you want a single source for everything, you can also get the cameras through Atiz, in which case the price will depend on which cameras and lenses you get. The standard choice is the Canon-EOS Rebel T3i camera with 18 to 55mm zoom lenses, for $8,679.83 for the bundle.

There's also a third choice. If you need to digitize only a limited number of books, you have the option of renting a scanner. Atiz says this done on a case by case basis, however, so there's no standard price.

One final issue is the option to pay for setup and installation plus a full day of on-site training. According to Atiz, company representatives show up at 8 AM, have the installation done by 10 AM, and then spend the rest of day training groups of up to four people each, taking one hour to 90 minutes for each group. The price for the day is $3,700.

Atiz says that most BookDrive Mini buyers set up the unit themselves, with setup support by phone and Skype included in the price of the scanner. The on-site setup is more common with Atiz's larger BookDrive scanner ($13,985 without cameras). The BookDrive is designed for page sizes up to 16.5 by 24.2 inches on each half of the cradle, making it suitable for scanning broadsheet newspapers like The New York Times.

Installation IssuesWhether or not you plan to install the BookDrive Mini yourself, make sure you have enough room for it. The scanner measures 34 by 32 by 40 inches (HWD) and weighs 57.2 pounds. And if you're doing it yourself, expect to spend more than the two hours Atiz takes. Assembling the pieces is a little like putting together prebuilt furniture. It's not all that complicated, but it takes time.

Installing the BookDrive Capture and BookDrive Editor Pro software is mostly standard fare, except that the installation routine doesn't automatically check with the Atiz website to see if you have the latest version. The smart approach is to ignore the disc that comes with the scanner and go to the website to download the program manually. (For my tests, I used BookDrive Capture 6.0.1 and BookDrive Editor Pro 6.0.9). Note too that the Capture program hooks into the Canon EOS camera utility, so you have to install the Canon utility too.

One other departure from standard for the software is that it requires a security dongle, with a separate dongle for each program. Making this much less of a problem than it could be is that the scanner comes with a four-port USB hub. So instead of tying up two USB ports with the dongles, you get a net gain of one.

ScanningUnless you paid for training, getting started with the BookDrive Mini is harder than it should be, because the software doesn't offer anything like a Wizard to help step you through setting up for scanning a book. There isn't even a help file installed on your computer. Expect to spend some time on the phone with tech support to get started.

That said, the basic process is simple enough once you've learned it. For example, it's important to turn the cameras on in the right order, so the software will know which one is the left page and which is the right. You also have to turn on the white LED lights, and adjust each camera's zoom, focus, position, and settings for the particular book you're about to scan. With different size books, for example, you'll need to adjust the zoom, and you'll want to make sure both cameras give you matching brightness for the pages.

For fine-tuning image quality, you'll also want to take advantage of the Image IQ feature. Atiz provides an image IQ chart with color patches, black and white patches, and other details. When you scan it, the software compares the scan with what it already knows the chart looks like. It then uses that information to manage color and other quality issues in the scanned pages.

Once everything is set up, scanning is almost trivial. In addition to the V-shaped cradle to hold the book, the scanner has a spring-loaded V-shaped glass platen to sit over the pages and help keep them flat. The platen is on a track, so it can move up and down, with springs helping it move easily. To keep it out of the way, you can move it to the top of the track, where it's held in position by magnets. To scan, you move it to the bottom position, just over the book pages, give the Capture command from your keyboard, lift the platen up, flip the page, and repeat.

The Capture software controls the cameras, saving each page in its own file, using JPG or RAW format, and indexing the pages as right or left and in numeric order. It also shows you the scan results of each page so you can check the quality as you go, and it offers conveniences like being able to replace pages you've already scanned or insert new pages, and then reindex the pages, which means renaming the files, so the page numbers will still be in the right order.

After you've finished scanning, you can open the scanned files in BookDrive Editor, where you easily crop the pages, apply digital enhancements like despeckling and deskewing, and then resave the pages or convert them to PDF, PDF/A, TIFF, or multi-Tiff. There is no optical character recognition (OCR) feature, but if you have an OCR program, you can open the files and convert them to whatever format the program supports, with searchable PDF the obvious choice.

The BookDrive Mini's price alone ensures that it will be of interest to only a small audience. But keep in mind that although it's expensive compared with scanners like the OpticBook 4800, it's less expensive than most scanners with similar V-shaped cradle designs. And even compared with the OpticBook 4800, the time you save with faster scanning can easily pay for the difference in price if you scan enough books.

More than that, if you need to scan old, fragile originals, a scanner with a V-shaped cradle is the best way to keep the original safe. For all of these reasons, the Atiz BookDrive Mini can actually be a bargain. It should make the short list for any company or other organization that needs to scan a large number of books at up to 10- by 15-inch format.

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a...

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